"A fanatic hates reason and ignores the reasoning mind."

— Sri Chinmoy
​The enduring danger of ideology over evidence

The Problem: When Ideology Becomes a Weapon Against Evidence

Let me start with something I've said on my podcast and to clients for years: the most dangerous person in the room is not the one who is wrong — it's the one who refuses to consider that they might be.

That quote — 'A fanatic hates reason and ignores the reasoning mind' — stopped me in my tracks when I first encountered it.

Because I've seen this dynamic play out in my 50+ years in the field. I've watched building owners reject data.
I've watched industry representatives dismiss decades of environmental science.

And I've watched the cost of that denial play out in asbestos litigation, lead paint liability, and now, in the accelerating cost of climate-related building damage.

Climate denial is not just a political problem.

It is a building problem, an infrastructure problem, an insurance problem, and a human health problem.

​And it is being actively fueled by a disinformation machine that targets the reasoning mind — and wins, unless we fight back with facts, visible solutions, and the courage to keep saying what is true.

97%+ scientists agree: climate change is real, human-caused, and urgent 

$280B+ annual global economic losses from climate-related disasters (Munich Re, 2023) 

~70% of US property insurers now factoring climate risk into underwriting decisions 

The Escalation: How Disinformation Spreads — and Who Pays the Price

From my experience, disinformation about climate change doesn't just exist in the abstract.

It has a body count — and a property count.

Every delayed infrastructure upgrade, every building owner who kept a failing conventional coating on a roof because 'it'll be fine,' every school district that deferred hazardous materials management because 'the regulations will change' — these are the downstream costs of fanatical anti-reason.

The disinformation machine works in recognizable patterns: it floods the zone with doubt, manufactures false equivalence between fringe outliers and scientific consensus, and — critically — it targets people's economic fears.

'Going green will cost you.'

'Regulations hurt business.'

It sounds reasonable on the surface.

But let me be honest with you: I've been making the green, sustainable choice since 1994, and it has never hurt my clients.

​It has saved them — time, money, liability, and lives.

"Disinformation doesn't just pollute the atmosphere — it pollutes decision-making. And polluted decisions lead to buildings that fail, budgets that collapse, and communities that suffer."

​— George C. Keefe, The ENCASEMENT Guy

Here is what the science actually says — and what the fanatic would rather you didn't know:

•The built environment accounts for 39% of global carbon emissions (World Green Building Council). Buildings are not innocent bystanders — they are central actors in the climate equation.

•The US generates 548 million tons of construction and demolition (C&D) waste per year (EPA) — the single largest category of solid waste in the country. Much of it is unnecessary.

•Urban heat islands — driven by dark, heat-absorbing rooftops and surfaces — drive local temperatures 5–15°F above surrounding areas, straining power grids, causing heat-related illness, and accelerating material degradation on the very buildings they cover.

•Indoor VOC concentrations run 2–5x higher than outdoor levels (up to 10x), and most of those pollutants originate from the conventional coating products applied to the surfaces people live and work inside of, every single day.

The Solution: Green ENCASEMENT Coatings — A Direct and Indirect Climate Response

It seems to me that one of the most powerful ways to combat the spread of climate disinformation is not through arguing on the internet — it's through doing.

Through showing the math.

Through pointing at buildings that have been standing, protected, and performing for 20+ years, and saying: this is what the smart choice looks like.

Green ENCASEMENT Coatings are not a political statement.

They are an engineering response to a physical reality.

And they work on three dimensions that address climate both directly and indirectly.

Dimension 1 — GREEN: Zero-VOC, Non-Toxic, Aligned With the Planet

Our Green ENCASEMENT Coatings are zero-VOC, water-based, non-toxic, biodegradable, and ozone-safe. They comply with EPA and CARB regulations, ASTM standards, LEED v4, Green Seal GS-11, and OSHA HazCom. They don't poison the air inside the buildings where your families sleep, work, and learn. This isn't a nice-to-have — it's the baseline of what a coating should be in 2026.

12 science-based criteria. Peer-reviewed.

Free Download: What Actually Makes a Coating Green Reference Guide https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20386765 OR: https://www.encasement.com/resouces

Dimension 2 — ENCASEMENT: A Multi-Threat Barrier That Outlasts Convention

This is where the climate case gets especially compelling. Through cross-link bonding, a seamless monolithic membrane forms a multi-threat barrier that becomes one with the surface — moving through thermal cycling without cracking or delaminating, sealing out water, UV, chemical exposure, and biological attack. This coating lasts at least 20 years — that's 4 to 6 times longer than conventional paint — with 20-year renewable warranty cycles.

The direct climate benefit: when a roof or wall system lasts 20 years instead of 5, you eliminate four replacement cycles. Four rounds of materials extraction, manufacturing, transportation, installation, and demolition waste — gone. That is real embodied carbon prevention, and it never shows up on a conventional ROI spreadsheet because most people don't account for what they don't have to do.

Dimension 3 — COATINGS: Standard Application, Standard Labor, Zero Excuses

Standard brush, roller, or spray application. Water cleanup. Local labor. No special equipment, no disruption to occupants, no hazardous waste stream. The coating is breathable — moisture vapor transmission prevents trapped moisture damage — self-leveling, gap-bridging, and conforms to complex geometry. There is no excuse not to do this. The barrier to adoption is not technical. It is informational. And disinformation is actively raising that barrier.

This is the system I've used on projects from the World Trade Center to Fukushima Daiichi. Now it's documented, peer-reviewed, and free.

Download the Three-Dimensional Methodology Reference Guide. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20417601 OR: https://www.encasement.com/resouces

15–40% reduction in cooling energy costs from solar-reflective Green ENCASEMENT Coatings (RoofCoat) 

24 gigatons CO₂ globally offset by widespread cool roof adoption (Lawrence Berkeley National Lab)

Up to 75% savings vs. full removal and replacement — the default of the conventional system 
 
​2.5 trillion sq ft new building stock added globally over the next 40 years (UN) — all needing coatings decisions 

The Indirect Effects: What the Fanatic Doesn't Want You to Count

Here's what I tell my family, friends and clients when this comes up: the fight against climate disinformation isn't just won with arguments.

It's won with outcomes.

And when you look at the full indirect impact of Green ENCASEMENT Coatings — beyond the coating itself — the picture becomes even more powerful.

Indirect Climate Benefit #1 — Elimination of C&D Waste

The replacement mentality — pushed by the conventional paint and roofing industries — generates the 548 million tons of annual C&D waste that the EPA documents.

Every square foot of roof, siding, or interior substrate that gets ENCASED instead of replaced is one less load in the landfill, one fewer manufacturing event, one less embodied carbon charge on the planet's account.

When you scale that across the millions of aging commercial and government buildings in the US alone, the numbers become staggering.

Indirect Climate Benefit #2 — Hazmat Containment Without Disturbance

Asbestos, lead-based paint, and PCBs are embedded in hundreds of millions of square feet of existing building materials across America alone.

Removal — the default under the replacement mentality — disturbs those materials, aerosolizes hazardous particulates, creates a toxic waste stream, and drives enormous liability exposure. In-place management through ENCASEMENT eliminates the disturbance event entirely.

AsbestoSafe and LeadLock form a seamless, cross-linked membrane over those hazardous substrates — protecting occupants and the environment while the building stands. That is not just a health decision. It is a climate decision.

Indirect Climate Benefit #3 — Post-Disaster Toxic Debris Lockdown

Wildfires, hurricanes, and floods don't just destroy buildings — they liberate the toxins embedded in them.

Ash from a wildfire passing through an older neighborhood carries heavy metals, lead, arsenic, and chromium from the building materials it vaporized.

Our MPE (Multi-Penetrating Encapsulant) is specifically engineered for post-disaster lockdown — zero-VOC, non-toxic, biodegradable — sealing hazardous debris before it migrates into soil, water, and air.

As climate-driven disasters increase in frequency and severity, this becomes not a niche product but a frontline environmental response tool.

Indirect Climate Benefit #4 — Reducing the Energy Penalty of the Built Environment

Our GEI RoofCoat reduces surface temperatures by 50–80°F and cuts cooling energy costs by 15–40%.

Multiplied across the tens of thousands of commercial and government buildings that use conventional dark roofing today, the grid-load reduction is enormous.

​This directly reduces peak demand on power systems — which is exactly the period when fossil fuel peaker plants are spun up. It is passive climate action that costs a fraction of replacement and lasts decades.

"The greenest building is the one still standing."

​— Owen Sutton, EPA Certified Lead Instructor

Combating Disinformation: What We Can Actually Do

From my 50+ years in this field, here's what I know about the fanatic's strategy: it targets fear and inertia.

It tells building owners that green solutions cost more, that they're unproven, that they're a fringe movement.

My answer to that is a 30+ year proven track record.

The World Trade Center. Kadena US Air Base in Japan. The USS Carney. US Navy Yards. Schools, hospitals, government buildings, and private residences across five continents — ENCASEd, protected, and performing for decades.

Here's what I think we can all do — not just in the coatings industry, but as citizens and professionals who understand what the science is saying:

•Name the disinformation when you see it. False equivalence between a handful of outlier researchers and 97%+ scientific consensus is not 'balance' — it is manufactured doubt. Call it by its name.

•Show the numbers. The moral case for climate action is strong, but the economic case is what moves buildings. A $171 billion annual loss from building envelope failures is a number that speaks to every facility manager, insurer, and CFO in the country.

•Demonstrate with projects. Every ENCASEd building that outlasts five paint cycles is an argument. Every school that safely contains its asbestos without a single bag of hazmat waste is an argument. Every cool roof that reduces an electricity bill by 30% is an argument.

•Support truth-tellers. Scientists, journalists, engineers, and building professionals who speak the truth about climate costs and climate solutions are under coordinated pressure. Stand with them publicly.

•Make the green choice the default choice. Specify it in contracts. Require it in RFPs. Teach it in training programs. When the sustainable option is the expected option, the fanatic loses its audience.

The Results: What Happens When You Choose Reason Over Denial

In my experience, when building owners stop listening to the disinformation and start looking at what Green ENCASEMENT Coatings actually deliver, the conversation changes fast. Here's what we see consistently:

•Buildings protected for 20+ years with a fraction of the cost of replacement — and a fraction of the environmental impact.

•Hazardous materials contained safely in place — no disturbance, no waste stream, no liability exposure.

•Energy bills reduced by 15–40% through solar-reflective cool roof technology, cutting both costs and carbon load.

•C&D waste eliminated — not just reduced — because the building material that is ENCASEd is never torn out, hauled, and landfilled.

•Occupant health protected — zero-VOC, non-toxic coatings replacing products that were actively degrading indoor air quality.

​•Proof that the green choice is the smart business choice — every time, on every continent, in every climate zone we've worked in.

🌿 Why Replace When You Can ENCASE?®

The fanatic hates reason because reason wins. And reason says: protecting what you have is smarter, greener, and cheaper than tearing it down and starting over.

​Ready to stop the replacement treadmill and start defending your building against climate, hazards, and aging? Visit encasement.com or call 800-266-3982 to talk with The ENCASEMENT Guy directly.

Cited Sources

• NASA — Scientific Consensus: Earth's Climate Is Warming

• Munich Re — Natural Disaster Statistics 2023

• NOAA NCEI — Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters

• World Green Building Council — Buildings and Climate Change (39% Emissions)

• U.S. EPA — Sustainable Management of Construction and Demolition Materials (548M tons)

• U.S. DOE — Cool Roofs (15–40% energy savings)

• Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory — Heat Island Group (24 gigaton CO₂ offset)

• UNEP — Towards Zero-Emission Buildings and Construction (2.5T sq ft)

• EPA/DOE Energy Star — RoofCoat™ Listing

​• Global ENCASEMENT, Inc. — encasement.com

Source: Global Encasement, Inc. | Est. Reading Time: 9 min
© 2026 Global Encasement, Inc. / ENCASEMENT.com | Educational/SEO resource. All citations link to authoritative sources.

DISCLAIMER: This article reflects the professional opinion of George C. Keefe based on 50+ years of field experience in environmental coatings and building protection.

References to climate science reflect published consensus findings from NASA, NOAA, EPA, LBNL, and the World Green Building Council. This article is not intended as legal, financial, or regulatory advice.

​Product performance data reflects documented project outcomes. Readers should consult qualified professionals for case by case site-specific assessments.